The U.S. and GB&I Ryder Cup teams took a day’s break from competition at No. 2 Pinehurst to attend the No. 1 ranked Tennessee Vols at North Carolina Tar Heels football game in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The American team led by Sam Snead led 3-1 after Friday’s opening session of the foursomes. Snead teamed with Lloyd Mangrum to defeat Scots Jimmy Adams and John Panton, 5 and 4. Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret won by the same result over Fred Daly and Ken Bousfield, while Jack Burke Jr. and Clayton Haefner earned the other full point in the opening game.
There was no golf on Saturday because of the football game, which Tennessee won 27-0. (The Vols would claim the program’s first national championship later that season, although this has been disputed by some since they lost to Maryland in their bowl game.)
Snead was among those who skipped the game and instead traveled to Florence, South Carolina for a paid exhibition. Famous London Sunday Times reporter Henry Longhurst was among British journalists who joined nine of the 10 G&BI players who initially protested the decision to cancel golf on Saturday in the Kenan Memorial Stadium press box.
“I just don’t understand what’s going on,” Longhurst wrote. “All I know is that I’m fine as long as I shout, ‘To Hell with Tennessee.'”
Another sports writer, Desmond Hackett of the London Daily Express: “They tried to tell me this was a tough game, a piece of legalized mayhem that made bullfighting look like a sissy. No sir. Any professional rugby club in England could eliminate the heavily armored characters who strolled in and out of this game. The English men don’t need an insurance policy of crash helmets and more padding than a horsehair sofa. They wear extremely short shorts and cotton shirts and in this rig. I’m sure they could beat the pants off these American huskies. That’s just my opinion, an opinion I express freely because it means I can duck out of town.’
The following Saturday, play at the North and South Open was also canceled, this time because of Duke’s home football game against Wake Forest in Durham.
In total, approximately 6,000 spectators per day and 30 journalists attended the 1951 Ryder Cup, according to Pinehurst. And it happened as resort guests continued to play No. 1, 3 and nine holes of No. 4.
When the Ryder Cup resumes on Sunday, its occurrence would mark perhaps the greatest comeback in competition history as Skip Alexander, who had been seriously injured in a plane crash about 14 months earlier, won his 36-hole singles match, 8 and 7, against Panton, considered the best player in Europe that year.
American teammate Dutch Harrison had fallen ill from the cold, and Snead went to Alexander, whose mangled hands had been permanently fixed in a golf grip by his surgeon, and asked, “Can you play?” Alexander replied: “Yes, I can play.” Although Alexander admitted that if he were Snead, he would have matched Hogan against Panton.
“I was all bandaged up; my hands were bleeding,” Alexander said. “I was playing against John Panton, winner of the Vardon Trophy, winner of the Order of Merit, winner of the biggest cash prize and all that. I had never gone 36 holes before and it was a 36-hole match. So I went off and every time I played a hole I wondered if I could play the next hole. But it worked out well.”
At the time, Alexander’s victory marked the largest winning margin ever. The Americans would win six of eight singles matches, with Ed Oliver being the only American player to drop a match that Sunday, winning their fifth straight Ryder Cup, 9.5–2.5. They would also win each of the next two matches, with the seven-match winning streak being the longest in the event’s history.
#Reminiscent #days #Ryder #Cup #skipped #day #college #football